I haven’t added mine over to the side yet but here it is for now. I’ll add it before this entry drops off. You can find more at her site here.

Other than dutifully following my MoveOn.org directions, I haven’t been very pro-active about what’s happening and sharing my opinion about it. Part of this is because I feel it’s so hopeless. I get depressed listening to the news so I haven’t been listening much. I know that George W. — that immoral idiot — is going to take us into a war whether I like it or not.

I just read a children’s chapter book written in 1945 about a family in a Japanese internment camp. It’s titled The Moved-Outers and it’s by Florence Crannell Means. It was interesting although the writing is, well, thick. The cookie jar makes “snug promises” and Mrs. Ohara’s upper lip is “fine as a scarlet thread drawing down quaintly to meet the full lower lip.” Ugh.

Despite the mannered descriptions, I’m glad it’s on our shelves. I think it would be a useful book to share with some kids now because its subject is — unfortunately — very timely. The characters are all patriots in a way that people were back then and they’re absolutely bewildered by what’s happened to them. Some carry their naivite through. Sue (Sumiko) says, “…[L]ook, other people have suffered and died for their country, and some of them unjustly, like the Salem witches and the Mormons … And out of all the pain and the standing for what people believed has come this America. And it’s still worth suffering for…” Her brother, Kim, is much less forgiving. “We’re not going back to America, kid,” he says. “Not by a long shot. And is there an America, anyway?”

I’m with Kim. And exactly how did the burning of innocent women at the stake move the country forward? Poor misguided Sue.

It’s sexist (it was written in 1945 after all) but I think its sexism accurately reflects the times. And I think younger children would be pretty bored by it since one of the main plots hinges on a romance. But if you see it at a used bookstore, I think it would be worth picking up.

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